Tree of Pearls

He looked disbelieving. As indeed you might. I’d be disbelieving myself – £100,000 given to charity by a semi-employed single mother from Shepherd’s Bush? But that’s what I did.

‘Why are you asking about them?’ I said.

He sniffed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Cold.’

I said nothing.

‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘du Berry has gone awol.’

‘Awol?’ I said.

‘Absent without leave,’ he said.

‘I know what it means,’ I snapped. ‘I just … I don’t think I’m very interested.’

And I wasn’t. I had put Eddie away from me. He has been what he has been but he is no longer. He is nothing to do with me now. Yeah, and hasn’t been for seven whole weeks, said an inner voice. You think you’re getting off that lightly? He’s history, I told it. History. Don’t drag me into this.

‘He’s disappeared,’ said Preston Oliver. ‘The Egyptians don’t seem to give a damn, but they have been polite enough to mention the el Araby brothers.’

Of course history does have a way of affecting the present.

How very sinister they sound, described that way. Sweet young hothead Hakim, and beautiful Sa’id, alabaster merchant, economist, Sorbonne graduate, singer of love songs, speaker of five languages, Nile boatman, holder of my heart. Sa’id who I left.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Something about a fight in a hotel in Cairo,’ he said. ‘I believe you were there.’

Oh.

‘Well, they’re not criminals,’ I said. ‘It’s ridiculous. If Eddie’s decided to abscond, that’s his business … probably he just threw out some accusations to muddy the water.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. I was pleased. ‘Now tell me about the fight.’

I love the way people throw out questions as if they were nothing. ‘How are you?’ is a good one. This was another. Six words. It sounds so easy. I was silent a moment, thinking, collating. Oh yes, the fight, that old thing. How will I choose to tell him about that? Given that I am telling him. And I was silent a moment longer, wondering if I could resist some more.

I could. But I wouldn’t, and I knew if I tried to I would be pretending.

He was watching, eyebrows tragically calm. He looked as if he had heard a thousand and one stories.

‘Eddie and I had a disagreement in a hotel corridor,’ I said. ‘Hakim had followed us because he feared for my safety, and when Eddie … attacked me, Hakim pulled him off.’

The ‘more’ gesture again, the eyebrows in repose at once calm, tragic and receptive.

‘That’s it, really.’ I don’t need to mention the knife, or say that Hakim had been working for Eddie, naif little fool that he is, nor that Eddie had been attacking me with a sexual purpose. I don’t think he needs to know that. And I felt the shameful ripples of Eddie and sex run over my shoulders and down my back.

‘What was the disagreement about?’

I didn’t answer. He didn’t push it, but he didn’t retreat either. All I wanted was to know that Sa’id and Hakkim were all right. But Sa’id and Hakim are not my business any more.

‘Are you in touch with the el Arabys?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Hakim el Araby has been questioned. He’s not a problem. But Sa’id has not made himself available. Do you know where he is?’

‘No.’

I was thinking about Sa’id’s family: Abu Sa’id, Mariam, Madame Amina. Oh god, all these decent people. Caught up. I told him I shouldn’t have gone to stay at his aunt’s while I was dealing with Eddie.

‘He took a flight to Athens ten days ago. Have you heard from him?’

‘No.’

‘Despite their being such good friends of yours? Staying with you and all that?’

My heart was falling, slowly, gently. I am just at the beginning of my days of healing and rebuilding. What’s it to me if Sa’id goes to Athens? If Eddie moves on? Leave me alone. My old enemy and my old lover. They’re not mine.

‘We were hoping you could help. If either of them gets in touch with you,’ he went on, ‘you must let us know.’

I gave him a long low look. Does he have the slightest idea what he is asking of me here? What he is doing to me? What either of these men has been to me? How Eddie, despite the quick, spontaneous, devilish pact we made that night when I prevented Hakim from knifing him, has never been anything but my enemy, my complex enemy, on many many levels? The serious enemy – the one who brings out from your own depths your own worst faults, your weaknesses? It was to Eddie that I did the worst thing I have ever done, and I hate him for it.

It’s part of the story. There’s no avoiding it. A year and half ago, when he kidnapped me in London … I’ll put it simply – he was trying to fuck me, I resisting. I hit him with a poker, knocked him out. Then as he lay unconcious and, due to the workings of the autonomic nervous system (I looked it up later), still hard, I fucked him back. Did to him the bad thing he had been trying to do to me. Out of anger and revenge, I gave him what he wanted in a way he could never enjoy. And my worst self enjoyed it very much. So I hate him.

There. Very simple.

And Sa’id? Sa’id taught me to leave the dead alone, showed me how forgiveness works, made me capable, in myself, of seeing off Eddie and his frightful attachment. And, if I am honest, mine. My frightful … not attachment. My … interest. Something.

‘I don’t imagine,’ I said, staring at him, ‘that either of them will.’ Don’t you stir this up, you. I’m trying to win the peace here. I have a child to look after. Leave me alone.

‘If they do,’ said Preston Oliver.

‘Sure,’ I said. Easily, because they wouldn’t, and if they did – well, I lied.

*

Then it was time for me to fetch Lily. She and I ambled home in the dark, unable to hear each other speak for the traffic heading west on the Uxbridge Road. We cut into the small streets as soon as we could, and admired other people’s lives glowing through their bay windows: their televisions and their teas. Lily wondered why we don’t live in a house.

‘Because we live in a flat,’ I said, interestingly. I was tired.

She said she’d like to live in a house. I concurred in a non-committal grunting fashion.

Then felt bad about my lack of interest. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘So that when you die I can bury you in the garden and you’ll still be near me.’

‘Oh sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Oh.’

‘I know it won’t really be you,’ she said. ‘I know it’ll just be your body, and worms will eat it, even your eyes, and your lovely little nose.’